Photos

Oh, Betty!

January Jones spent years in Hollywood smiling through role after role as Babe #4 before landing a part as Betty Draper on ‘Mad Men’—the most complex, mysterious woman on television today. And if you want to understand where America’s sexiest housewife comes from? Just ask January—over a few too many beers—how she got to where she is today

january wants to go to the Chili’s near the H Gates. She loves the queso there. Loves it even though it doesn’t always come in one of those little cast-iron skillets like at regular Chili’s and they don’t have a “red beer” (beer and tomato juice) here like she’s seen at the franchise’s other midwestern outlets. It doesn’t matter that the place is noisy and crowded and the only TV is tucked way up behind the bar and she probably won’t be able to catch the last preseason Bears game. The queso’s that good.

While we wait for a table, she explains that she also feels a bit of nostalgia for this particular O’Hare branch of the chain: She passes through here a lot when taking time off from acting—traveling home, say, to her parents’ house in Des Moines around the holidays. So it’s fitting that she’s here tonight, fresh from taping Oprah with Mad Men co-star Jon Hamm and at the beginning of a Labor Day break from shooting the series’ third season. The two of us are headed back to Los Angeles on a seven-thirty flight.

“I’m on vacation,” she says as she navigates a beat-up old Nike-brand roller bag through the crowd of overstuffed patrons. “It’s time to relax.”

We order our queso and beers, and she proceeds to do exactly that. Jones still has her Oprah makeup on and is wearing dark jeans, boots, and a skintight black top—the kind of outfit almost conspicuous in its intent not to draw attention, but no one notices her. She curls deep into the corner of our booth, and we talk aimlessly, first about football (“My screen saver is a photo of me with Peyton and Eli at the Kentucky Derby”) and then about the constant ups and downs of her career. “It was great when it blew up at Cannes,” she says of the film she’s most proud of, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, directed by Tommy Lee Jones (no relation). “But everyone thought it was a nepotism thing. There was one journalist who asked, ‘How is it, being directed by your father?’ ”

The conversation is easy, funny, and familiar, but also strange, because it’s so damn un-Betty-Draper-like. Jones has been around Hollywood for a decade and has had her share of memorable small performances in big films, but nothing that’s come close to the cultural icon that is Mrs. Draper, a character that’s become an obsessive fixation of, and bold provocation to, male desire. Jones has managed to occupy the character so seamlessly and convincingly that it’s almost a career liability. “I’d never really played a mom or a wife before,” she says, “and all of a sudden I’m getting all these lonely mom and wife offers. I don’t want to get stuck.”

But she’s not too worried about it. First, the emotionally inhibited ’60s housewife is such a specific role. “It’s not like being on Friends or something,” she says. And being identified so strongly with her character is, in a way, a testament to the quality of her work. Jones proudly tells the story of Jack Nicholson, with whom she acted in 2003’s Anger Management, having watched nearly the entire first season of the show without realizing that she was Betty Draper. “That was pretty awesome,” she says of getting the call from Nicholson. It was a kind of vindication, especially since not everyone in Hollywood has always been so positive.

“The guy I was dating when I first got to L.A. was not supportive of my acting,” she says. “He was like, I don’t think you’re going to be good at this. So—fuck you! He only has nice things to say now—if anything, I should thank him. Because the minute you tell me I can’t do something, that’s when I’m most motivated.”

By the time she’s telling me this, we’ve finished our beers and queso and are sitting in our seats for Los Angeles, and I’m too occupied with figuring out who the “guy I was dating” is to take this story as it should be taken: as a warning. Because by now, January has already finished her first in-flight drink and is giving me a hard time for being slow on mine. It’s clear that she’s taking the notion of having fun on her “vacation” very seriously; it’s up to me to keep pace. Shouldn’t be a problem, I think. She’s so small—give her another beer or two and she’ll be asleep.

Mistake number one: doing what that skeptical boyfriend (as it turns out, a guy named Ashton Kutcher) did and doubt January Jones. Because she will be so pleased—resolutely, ruthlessly, perhaps a tad too gleefully—to prove your ass wrong.

*****

marv jones likes to tell a story about Bruce Willis and his daughter’s first major film, Bandits—a bank-heist romp that came out in 2001, when January was 23. “Bruce said, ‘When I first heard the name January Jones, I thought: I need to meet this girl. She’ll be a star,’ ” remembers Marv.